About Time We Broke Up
by kusegoto
Summary: (Мор. Утопия / Pathologic) Clara wanders into the Abattoir, now opened like a cracked walnut. She realizes, quickly, that even saints might see their reflections mingling in old polytheism.


No one is allowed to enter the Abattoir without the will of the Kindred, but these days the land around the great entrance is free grazing, and the door's been open ever since the Haruspex commanded the death of the auroch Warden. As Clara has learned, it is often best to work against the will of the earth when you're trying to understand it.

She likes the way the grass tickles her knees as she hops, arms branched as she balances on the trodden narrow dirt made from hundreds of Kinsmen walking to and from the Town. There is plenty of grass, but there are also plenty of herbs. The plants don't sing to her, as the Haruspex explained, because she is not born of earth, rather in spite of it; but she thinks she's a creative enough girl to get started.

There are several stones you could walk on. She imagines Vladislav the Heavy watching his working men and women from the angle, nothing more than a platform raised to bring your heavy shoes off the ground. Maybe she'll place every herb and flower she plucks here as a way to assess her findings. If she spends too long out in the Steppe, you might get lost on your way back. The Town illuminates on the horizon, but she's heard that for every minute you wander from its boundary at night, a thousand miles will be put between you and home.

But it is early enough in the day. She has a couple of large rocks in her pocket, and you can trust pebbles.

Clara wanders inside, the sun behind her head. The walls of the mountain-like structure are bulky, like the way you'd peel a turnip, or maybe a potato. The flat, porous skin of a root that keeps the skin on its edges. The antithesis of a polyhedric shape! She remembers the word with disdain, but it feels the same. The cavern walls are bloody and dusted in earthy brown. Clara presses her hand to the flank, and it reminds her of the bull horns in Town hanging on the walls.

What exists in the earth and stone? She prefers matters of secrets and stories, something you can't hold too tight or it will slip away. Blood works that way — even cupped, it takes no shape. It's easier to work with. She has been to every corner of town, and she feels only Earth here. Burakh could work with the living, but he's even more talented with curating the dead. The will of magic has a way of getting into your head.

There are well of blood she sees, fountains desiccated. There's nothing left to drink, but she wonders if she could bottle it up and sell it like an illegal cocktail everyone's still begging for. Burakh found a resolution, yes! But are there mouths still left to feed?

The bowels of the Earth do not crush her under its cavernous maw. Perhaps it can smell sainthood off her. She knows her truth, even in the age of new blood — she is relieved such earthly matters believe her. Clara lifts her head, and she is shocked when her shadow moves.

It is tangible; even from here, Clara recognizes it is not a shadow cast, but rather a blackened mass with its own shape. A viscous fluid that pulls and stretches like a shadow from out of the corner of her eye. She watches torchlight flicker, but no one runs by.

"Hello," she says, and the earth replies.

"Why have you come here, sister?"

Clara lowers herself completely to the floor, sitting with her knees drawn to her chest. The crystals are firm in her pockets. "Why have you crawled free in this den, of all places? Why are you here?"

"You already know what we look like. I have to stay over here." It sounds like her, but isn't her. The languid-sharp, distant-close way of her sister, her second Self, coils around her like the shadows of the cave. "Where are we?"

"Questions... always echoing back to me..."

"Just like you do to me, sister."

"I'm here because I want to investigate. Haruspex has cut the vein and blood flows free, but he destroyed a miracle for some half-made one! Did you crawl out of the pores, or are you warning me of something else?"

"I feel like I should, or that I want to. But I don't know if there is anything to warn. Have you ever felt like something was coming?"

"Every day of our life. But I know yet that there isn't."

"But there isn't... and yet, I can't shake this feeling..."

Clara closes her eyes, tight. "Shut up. I won't be tricked by you again."

"Trickery is what we deal in," her sister says, her Self says, the Changeling says. "I would never lie to you, though."

"Do you want a pebble?" she asks.

"No. I don't like toys. I prefer secrets."

"And lies!"

"And lies, but only if we can find the truth in them. I only tell you the truth! We can _only_ tell the truth."

"If you're a seer, then I'm truly a liar," Clara says, and decides she's had enough. Burakh won. This is a victory. Dankovsky can pretend everything has died, and she can insist she's won. "Burakh is victorious, and Dankovsky is an idiot. Why would you crash the victory march?"

"You're talking to yourself again," her sister-self says, and the shadow creeps, walks, runs and twists in her light. "What will you do when it gets too late to play outside?"

Clara says a curse word she learned from Stanislav Rubin.

She stands up and decides the Abattoir is more irritating backdrops than a real stage. Maybe the Steppe will be kind to her on her exit.

"Don't leave! You'd leave me? You'd leave me in the dark?" Her Self speaks, close to her ear, with no one behind. "It is so lonely here!"

"This is no holy place for saints, and still I know you poison this bloodied cavern!" Clara says, turning her head. "Whatever lies you weave, I know there is no victory in you. We are incompatible; you are clay, and I am skin."

Behind her, she sees herself. The shadow is gone, and instead her own body fades with the darkness. Clara wonders if she, herself, should stand here. Distantly, she can hear a wind, like a great cliff side.

"I am you, as you are I," her Self insists, teaching her hands out. "Do you know what happened to the Foreman? His body is buried. He was accepted into the ground."

"I spoke to his grave," Clara murmurs.

"Yes — but the kind Earth took the unkind Warden. Can you and I not become one in such a way? A two headed angel, with four eyes and a hand for each of us." Her Self places her palms together. "Becoming one... answering the question to be had. We will know what comes next."

Clara knows the feeling in her knees, the one where she wants to walk forward. But she digs her heels against the rock, praying in the pebbles to act like weights. Her face burns, like her brother may yet be near.

"I wish to see mother and father again," the Changeling says.

"My patrons have spurned me," Clara recites. "Your own scorn forced their hands. We cannot be one."

Clara turns her body once more. Her fists remain clenched, and she removes the pebbles from her pockets to discard them. She can hear footsteps follow her, like running bells, and her legs carry her faster, through the cavernous entrance that led her in — soon, she is cresting the doorway of the Abattoir. Light, or what remains of it, spills over her. Not a shadow or shade could break free behind her.

She lowers her head. Then, lifts it, and returns to Town.


End file.
